In the last days of World War II, a new and baffling weapon terrorized U.S. sailors and soldiers in the Pacific; known to these servicemen as "suiciders," they were Japan's kamikaze fighters, serving their country as human-guided missiles in hopes of stopping the American advance on their homeland. Vividly re-creating these horrific attacks through interviews with survivors, Vietnam veteran and former navy officer David Sears (author of The Last Epic Naval Battle) recounts a relentless series of furious and violent engagements on individual U.S. warships, pitting men determined to die against men determined to live.

"Contrasting the fate of several American ships to that of USS Cole in the 2000 al-Qaeda terror attack, [the author] demonstrates the damage that the Imperial Navy suicide bombers wrought. That campaign, he observes, was a mark of having no other options, the American fleet having destroyed most of Japan's and forcing 'a stunning new "backs-against-the-wall" paradigm for modern warfare.' The author focuses on U.S. forces, though with considerable attention to the Japanese side of the equation.... Sears does a particularly good job of bringing in the various voices of the fast-dwindling corps of American survivors of hellish engagements at Leyte and Okinawa, among other places.... The attacks took a terrible toll on American sailors, Marines and soldiers, which left 'even the healthiest veterans perplexed and embittered at a nation, culture, and people capable of devising such attacks.' Sears closes with a look at how veterans on both sides bridged the gulf between them."—Kirkus Reviews